


Absences and Additions

by girlsarewolves



Category: Skinwalkers (2006)
Genre: F/M, Gen, POV Second Person, canon - script, not movie canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 16:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3256841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think to yourself, 'This isn't what I wanted.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absences and Additions

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely based on script canon, where Caleb left to infiltrate the naturalists but wound up becoming one himself, and where Rachel smoked, and she and Jonas had a definite, but unspoken thing.

* * *

You think to yourself, 'This isn't what I wanted.'

* * *

 

You're eighteen - that precipice between girl and woman, when you're legal but you still feel minor and small at the same time you're invincible and immortal and ready to conquer life, because nothing can stop you.

  
And the love of your life - your girlhood crush turned puppy love turned high school steady sweethearts - asks you to marry him.

And your parents tell you to wait.

And your friends tell you to go to college and try out some more boys.

But all you want is him. Mysterious, handsome, wild; how could any college boys ever compare?

So you practically scream yes, and you think, 'This is the first day of the rest of my life,' and nothing could ever go wrong now.

* * *

It's not even a year later when he's gone.

No goodbye note. No lifeless face to not respond when you scream. No trace at all.

His brother comes to break the news. He tells you that the love of your life is gone, never coming back, and you feel the entire world shift.

'We were invincible,' you think, because you're only nineteen and barely a wife, and now you're a widow. 'We had our whole lives ahead of us,' you declare to that merciless,soulless thing known as fate.

But the whole of his life is not the whole of yours, and you don't know how to comprehend that frightening thought.

What are you now if not his wife? What are you now without him?

* * *

A month later and you know: 'Mother.'

Jonas takes you to the doctor when you throw up three days in a row, when he asks you the last time you bled, and you realize you can't remember.

And it's not fair - 'He should be here. I don't want a child. I want my husband. That's all I want. I want my husband back.' If he was back, you'd be happy. If he was back, this would be part of that long life the both of you had envisioned.

But he's gone, left; buried even though there's not a body to be found.

You used to think he was gone without a trace, but now there's a trace left, it's just inside you. So you cling to that, to that last, little piece of him, and try to be happy instead of devastated.

* * *

It's hell giving up cigarettes, but you tell yourself, 'It's just a little while longer now,' and you keep telling yourself that every day, every time the itching craving comes back.

You remember all the times Caleb tried to make you stop. 'Those will kill you, you know,' he'd said, and she'd laugh him off.

'Yeah, eventually.'

It's not so funny now. Maybe you won't pick the habit back up after the baby's born. Probably better for the baby after all; second hand smoke kills, they say. Can't be good for developing lungs even if it's no longer inside you, leeching off you, draining you of the meager scraps of energy that grief left you.

And you feel guilty, because this is your child, his child, but then you're just angry and sad that he isn't here to be happy and nervous about becoming a father; about having his entire world, their entire world, shift to make room.

You're tired of your world shifting for absences and additions.

* * *

'It's a boy,' they tell you, and isn't that perfect? A beautiful, tiny boy, who will grow up to be his father's shadow. You cry, and it doesn't surprise you - but what does is that they're tears of joy, not the ones of sorrow you've grown so accustomed to.

Even when it's Jonas and not Caleb who places the child in your arms, you forget to fake being happy, because you are. You look down at the red, messy, wrinkly, tiny human squirming and whining, and you forget for a moment that your world is upside down and still re-adjusting.

'Timothy,' you whisper, because that's one of the names you remember him suggesting before he left. 'My Timothy.'

And your entire world shifts, because he's your world now, and you don't mind so much this time. Because you still want your husband back, but you're just so happy your son is here and alive and well that it isn't such a painful longing anymore.

* * *

By the time you're twenty-one, you're back on the cigarettes and ready to start drinking, but you don't, because the cigarettes are bad enough.

You don't like the new town. You don't like being so far from your family (a family that didn't support your marriage, that didn't support your depression over losing your husband, that didn't support your pregnancy and unwavering resolution to raise the child yourself). You don't like the way Timothy gets fussy even when there shouldn't be anything wrong, but there's something off with how he's breathing.

And they tell you it's possibly asthma, but they don't know, and you hate how backwards the doctors in this dinky town seem.

But Jonas promises you they're not, and they'll take care of Tim, and he'll take care of both of you, and Nana is always there for you as well. 

So you smile for his sake, and for Nana's, and try not to be angry at them because it's not their fault they've treated your better than your own flesh and blood. You smile, and you slip out back for a smoke when it feels like everything's piling so high you're gonna break.

And you can't help but think, 'I just want my husband back.'

Because Caleb would know what to do, just what to say, how to make everything right. But he can't make everything right, because he's dead, and you almost hate him for driving off in the first place, and you want him back so you can scream at him, 'How could you? You didn't have to go, you never even told me why!'

You close your eyes and take a drag and tell yourself to let go.

'What does it even matter why?'

But it matters. Whatever took him away from you matters.

* * *

It gets easier. That surprises you one day, when it's Tim's eighth birthday, and you and Nana and Kat are setting up the dining room for the small celebration.

You don't always think about him. You don't always hurt. You don't always feel your gut clench when you look at Tim or Jonas or Katherine or Nana. You don't find yourself wishing you could trade them all for him, and you realize that they're as important to you now as he was - is - and you're actually happy about it.

Not so guilty like you'd have been a couple years ago.

And you have a normal job, and a normal life, and you and Tim are coping with the breathing problems and the health issues, and your family (because that's how you think of them now; as yours and not just his) helps any and every way they can.

And it's a good life.

You want him back, of course. You want this life with him in there, too, but you move on.

You smile when Jonas brings Tim home from shopping for presents, and your son's eyes light up, and he eats too much cake. You smile, you laugh; you live. You let your hand linger on Jonas' arm, and you don't feel guilty when you sip coffee on the swing, sitting next to him after Tim's gone to bed.

'Sometimes, I forget that I miss him.'

Jonas nods and there's understanding in his eyes; you remember that he lost his brother when you lost your husband.

'It's like that for all of us, I think,' he tells you, and you're grateful, cause you needed to hear it. 'But that doesn't mean we don't. Or that we don't wish he was with us.'

'But he's not,' you adds reluctantly. Your head on his shoulder isn't so reluctant though.

* * *

You're thirty-two and your son is minutes from thirteen, and you remember all those times you wanted your husband back in your life - in your son's life - and you want to curse and scream at that merciless, soulless thing known as fate.

And you find yourself wishing he was still dead, and you hate yourself for wanting him back, and you almost hate Jonas for lying and for hiding, and you hate Caleb for leaving and most of all for returning.

Your entire world is shifting, upside down, inside out, because your family - his family - is dying off one by one, and everything you thought you knew is all mixed up and wrong, and the man you realized you've grown to love as much as you used to love your husband is dying right in front of you.

'This isn't what I wanted,' you think, fighting back the sobs because you have to be strong for yourself and for your son -but  you've always been strong, you realize, fighting through everything life has thrown your way. And you are invincible, but being invincible means going through hell to become so.

And in the end, you get your husband back - but the cost is everyone else besides your son, besides that last piece of him he left you, that he came back to destroy like it didn't matter, like you never mattered.

And you hate him, and you want to scream at him, 'Why couldn't you have just died?!'

But you don't. You don't do that to your son, not after everything else he's lost. You let Caleb Varek, your dead husband resurrected as a monster, live. Your entire world shifts again; gaping absences and one unwanted addition.

No, this was never what you wanted.


End file.
